Intro to 2 Peter 2:17-22

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 04/21/2004

My Worship Time                                                                           Focus:  Intro to 2 Peter 2:17-22

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  2 Peter 2:17-22

            Message of the verses:  “17 These men are like wells without a drop of water in them, like the changing shapes of whirling storm-clouds, and their fate will be the black night of utter darkness. 18 With their high-sounding nonsense they use the sensual pull of the lower passions to attract those who were just on the point of cutting loose from their companions in evil. 19  They promise them liberty. Liberty!—when they themselves are bound hand and foot to utter depravity. For a man is the slave of whatever masters him. 20 If men have escaped from the world’s contaminations through knowing our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, and then become entangled and defeated by them all over again, their last position is worse than their first. 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of goodness at all, than after knowing it to turn their backs on the sacred commandments given to them. 22 For them, the old proverbs have come true about the "dog returning to his vomit," and "the sow that had been washed going back to wallow in the muck’ (Phillips).”

            We begin a new chapter in Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of 2 Peter, and he entitles this chapter “False Freedom,” and it covers the remaining verses of the second chapter of second Peter.  I have once again chosen to use the Phillips version of the Bible, a paraphrased version of only the New Testament.”

            Dr. Wiersbe writes “Freedom is a concept that is very important in today’s world, yet not everybody really understand what the word means.  In fact, everybody from the Communist to the ‘playboy’ seems to have his own definition.  Nobody is completely free in the sense of having the ability and the opportunity to do whatever he wants to do.  For that matter, doing whatever you please is not freedom—it is the worst kind of bondage.

            “The apostates offer freedom to their converts, and this ‘bait’ entices them to abandon the true faith and follow the false teachers.  The teachers promise them liberty, but this promise is never fulfilled; the unstable converts only find themselves in terrible bondage.  The freedom offered is a false freedom, and Peter gave three reasons that explain why it is false.”

            The first reason we will be looking at is “It is Based on False Promises,” and there are three sub-points under this main point.  Next “It is Offered by False Christians,” and there are no sub-points under this second main point.  Thirdly “It Involves a False Experience.”

            It looks like to me that going over these three points will take us a fair amount of time as I have been trying to keep these Spiritual Diaries on 2 Peter a little bit smaller because I am doing these in order to replace the SD’s that I cannot find, which means that I am doing two SD’s each day along with studying for my Sunday School lesson on Revelation that I have been teaching, so it is kind of a full plate for me.

9/18/2017 10:55 AM